South Florida Fishing Report 8/30/18

South Florida Fishing Report 8/30/18

Here’s what’s going on in the waters of South Florida at the end of August 2018. In these reports our guides address the most current state of their specific fisheries and make short-term predictions based on their own historical experiences. Remember that there are many variables that can affect the fishing from day to day, so use these reports as a general outline to help you prepare for your next trip.

Lake Ida & Inshore Palm Beach

Looking forward to what for me is the best fishing of the year. The mullet run. Late September, early October is when the chaos should begin. It all depends on when the water temps start dropping, sending the mullet this way. The snook, tarpon and jack fishing along the seawalls, bridges and on the beach is incredible when the mullet show up in full force. I like to stock up on big mullet patterns such as the Kraimer’s DH Baitfish and 3/0 EP Black Tail Finger Mullet for the show.

Meantime I’m starting to see the first showing of the little tarpon (15-20 pounders) in the intracoastal here. The snook fishing along the bridges has been good at night and the snook are still stacked in inlets. They will be moving out when water temps start to drop and the mullet show up. I have been on the cubera snappers in the intracoastal as well. We’ve been getting them on spin but I believe we can get them with a fly if anyone wants to give it a shot.

Lake Ida has been slow, however where we’ve found good moving water, we’ve consistently found peacocks willing to cooperate. The Lake Ida peacocks are another ticking time bomb ready to go off when the temps start to drop.

Capt Patrick Smith

Everglades

There are tons of glass minnows on the coast, and the tarpon are doing backflips on them. The average size tarpon we’ve been catching in the bait schools are 10-15 pounders, with the bigger ones being around 50-60 pounds. You have to be there first thing in the morning being that this is over early. The rest of the day leads to the possibility of a backcountry slam as we’ve been catching and seeing more redfish then we have in a while.

The redfish are also out on the coast. The east winds we’ve been having have helped push some of the bad water out and we’re finding clean water with redfish on the falling end of the tide.

The snook fishing has been pretty good back in the bays. Finding points with clean, moving water is the key to finding the snook stacked up on each other.

Capt Jason Sullivan

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